I've been a Prime subscriber for two years and counting. Since I don't live in a major metro area and a lot of what I want to buy isn't available locally, I order a LOT through Amazon. I probably save several hundred dollars per year in shipping costs through the Prime membership. If they increase the price from $80 to $100 or even $120, I'll still sign up for it.

Hell, this one time, I got an Olympic barbell set (300 lbs) and a bench and squat rack (probably another 50 or so) shipped to me free through Amazon Prime. Probably paid for my whole year's membership right there!

Edit: if they separated media services from shipping services, I'd only get the latter. But I'd be willing to pay a pretty penny for the latter.

I wish they would do a monthly membership plan instead of 80 bucks or now 100 or whatever they change it to all in one shot. At the least make the video membership a monthly service to compete a bit more with Netflix.

Heh...as an Android user who would occasionally like to stream Instant Video on my Nexus 7, I'd happily pay an extra $20/year for actual Android support. (You can watch the instant video on iPads and Kindle Fires, however, Amazon has refused to release a proper Android client)

Also, I wouldn't expect that they would raise the price too much. A Netflix streaming account costs $96/year ($7.99/mo), and I would suspect that they are gaining some additional customers that would otherwise just sign up for Netflix...

I think they need to split up the shipping benefits from the media services - those are really two different things entirely. In my mind like selling laundry detergent and car tires in a bundle.

I don't think it would be worth it for them though. I know I personally only am giving it a try because of the extra add-ons. The shipping alone isn't enough to get me to pay for it. While I understand that there are plenty of customers who aren't that way, I would argue that enough of them are to make it worth their while. Although, personally I have been extremely disappointed in their video selection, which gives me a negative overall impression of the service that probably wouldn't have been there if I had only purchased Prime for the shipping benefits.

As a long time Prime subscriber who does not care about the streaming video I'd suggest making that portion an add-on to the main Prime subscription.

Does anyone care about the streaming video? I think if they were to separate the two, justification for keeping the streaming video service would die. It was initially provided as a "bonus" to having prime but for everyone I know it never went beyond that...

Split the services or keep the price the same. I don't watch Prime "free" video enough for it to have much value for me. If they jack up the shipping to $100+ I'll just drop prime and do a mix of slow free shipping and fast paid shipping.

Fair warning: when I'm paying for shipping Newegg will start being much more competitive, so they'll lose some more of my business that way.

I don't use streaming at all and Amazon Prime has really gone downhill, probably because of it being locked in together. So many things are now "add on" items that require you to buy $25 worth of things distributed by Amazon. Also the speed of the shipping seems to be worse.

I routinely get things later than the 2 day shipping now. I was thinking of canceling Prime anyway and if they are raising the price, I'll probably cancel.

I've been a Prime member for several years and, honestly, the novelty has worn off. I was contemplating not renewing to begin with and, if prices go up, that will seal it for a couple of reasons:

1. Two-day shipping just isn't that big of a deal any more. It's very seldom that I order anything that I need or want in two days. If something is needed that critically, I probably can't wait two days to begin with.

2. Their video service is, for the large part, duplicative of Netflix. The little they have that differentiates it is nothing of interest to me. (And offerings on both Netflix and Amazon are really not that great any more.)

3. More of the things I order lately seem to be falling in the "add on" category.

4. The two-day service has been slipping in the past six months. More things seem to get shuffled off to third-party carriers (like OnTrac) and things will show up in 3-4 days versus the two days.

Basically, I'm already not seeing much value in paying them $79/year let alone paying them more.

Edited to add:

One thing I forgot: their pricing is less and less competitive. Even after sales taxes were added, their pricing on a lot of things was competitive with local places, so a few bucks could still be saved.

Lately, there have been things on Amazon that are actually a few bucks cheaper locally. Not necessarily big ticket items like TVs, although I haven't priced those. But ordinary household goods, clothes, etc.

Prime paired with Subscribe and Save (for the stuff that doesn't warrant a special Target trip) is a great deal, especially for folks with kids. It has also made me more selective by trying hard to find the item from a seller that is "Prime Eligible." Not sure what the extra $20 will do to the overall economics, but having spent the money up front for Prime does make you more likely to use Amazon for everyday purchases...

As far as the video selection goes, it's no better than Netflix, and most movies they have that I want to see that aren't on Netflix cost $ and are also on AppleTV. With a purchase through AppleTV I get to download and keep the content on iTunes. No need to pay for something once and keep streaming it indefinitely (again, those with kids know this pain).

Heh...as an Android user who would occasionally like to stream Instant Video on my Nexus 7, I'd happily pay an extra $20/year for actual Android support. (You can watch the instant video on iPads and Kindle Fires, however, Amazon has refused to release a proper Android client)

Also, I wouldn't expect that they would raise the price too much. A Netflix streaming account costs $96/year ($7.99/mo), and I would suspect that they are gaining some additional customers that would otherwise just sign up for Netflix...

Speak for yourself, pal. I've been a Prime user for 5-6 years and really get my money's worth during Black Friday Lightning Deals. While Instant Video has some cool stuff, I don't watch as much as I could simply due to Amazon's stubborn and inexplicable refusal to support Android. This is simply zero reason for them to not put out an Android app other than they don't want to. They've pitched Prime Video as a better value than Netflix, but when you can't watch on the overwhelming leader in mobile OS (about 3:1 over iOS) and the only digital content Amazon doesn't allow on Android is Video when Kindle books, MP3s and Apps are sold without restriction, that's some serious bovine excrement.

The streaming service for Prime offers little unique or new content. I already get Neflix and Hulu and most new titles appear on either or both of those on the same day they're added to Amazon Prime. In 2013, I think I only gained access to 1-2 movies and just 2 TV shows that weren't featured on Netflix and Hulu, and they've since been added to one or both of the other sites.

Two-day shipping means two business days. So, if I order something on Saturday, I'd hope to get it by Tuesday, but I might not see it until Wednesday. This month one package wasn't shipped until the evening of the day it was due to arrive. It finally arrived 2 days later with apologies from Amazon. But there's room for improvement with the "two-day shipping."

I subscribe because the Prime Membership is modestly less than what I would pay in shipping costs for the year. If they raise the price of admission, they threaten that. I do order more through Amazon as a result of my membership, including a substantial number of purchases I could have made elsewhere (including local shops). It's not worth it to me to just break even.

I'm sure they can afford to maintain or even lower the price of membership, and I certainly expect they'd enjoy better end results if they did.

I probably save several hundred dollars per year in shipping costs through the Prime membership.

But they still offer free shipping without Prime, it's just a few days slower. I'll drop my Prime if they raise the price that much.

Well, it's more than just a few days slower. Super Saver shipping is really slow, like, 2 weeks in transit instead of two days. (I learned the hard way not to preorder hot games with super saver, because my roommates will have beaten them before my copy arrives.)

As for the people wishing they'd separate streaming from shipping -- fat chance. Including access to their existing video service costs Amazon next to nothing (unlike shipping), and it's not easy to convince people to use Amazon Video instead of Netflix or something else. Giving it away to people who want free shipping may convince those people that it's worthwhile, which creates a base of potential evangelists, too.

Split the services or keep the price the same. I don't watch Prime "free" video enough for it to have much value for me. If they jack up the shipping to $100+ I'll just drop prime and do a mix of slow free shipping and fast paid shipping.

Fair warning: when I'm paying for shipping Newegg will start being much more competitive, so they'll lose some more of my business that way.

Mostly this for me. I've bought items via Amazon because of the Prime shipping over Newegg, regardless of a price difference.

I also think they need to separate out the Instant Video and charge a separate fee for it.

I'm a fan of the bundled approach. It is the sum of Prime that makes me shell out cash for it, not any individual piece. I'll also pay extra for it. And the reason for that is that Amazon customer service speaks english and is fast to reach.

200 million sure doesn't sound like a very good profit margin off of 20 billion. I wonder if it is mostly R&D type of stuff or if they always have such slim margins overall.

They are building up infrastructure like AWS and distribution centers. There are some quotes from guys at Amazon mentioning a lot of areas are pulling nice profits and are fully self funded, they just spend the money elsewhere to build up more.

Like having a lemonade stand, you can sell lemonade and have a nice profit or spend that profit to build a second lemonade stand. In the first case you make money, in the second you have 0 profit but you can earn twice as much.

I wish they would do a monthly membership plan instead of 80 bucks or now 100 or whatever they change it to all in one shot. At the least make the video membership a monthly service to compete a bit more with Netflix.

They won't do this. At least not without a huge montly penalty (think $20/month, not $8)

It would be too easy to game (i.e. sign up only for December for Christmas stuff) and would completely undermine the lock-in effects they enjoy (i.e. "hey, I already paid for free shipping, might as well look for it at Amazon first").

Personally, I'm thinking of canceling. I simply don't use it enough as is and a price hike would probably seal that deal.

At $99 dollars it would still be worth it. At $120 they'd be pushing it. But if you're someone who has a Kindle and orders everything from Amazon I doubt a $40 boost is going to drive you away. Prime is worth it to me because they package and ship Prime orders near immediately vs waiting sometimes up to several days without Prime (unless you pay for the shipping and if you're going to pay for the shipping you might as well just get Prime). I've even had orders show up the next day since they built their distribution warehouse not that far from my home.

As a long time Prime subscriber who does not care about the streaming video I'd suggest making that portion an add-on to the main Prime subscription.

Ditto. I don't use streaming from big A since Hulu Plus, Netflix, and Vudu are more than adequate.

I am cool with $79.99 since I come out ahead on shipping costs every year. They should make it two-tiered to avoid the backlash from the "non-streamers" like us. Which makes me wonder what the ratio is?

I've been a prime member for years, but I've already started gravitating away from Amazon since they now charge tax in my state as of this year. As a result I've found myself shopping a heck of a lot more on eBay, which has "fast 'n' free" shipping from Fedex, which is generally 1-2 days since I live in FEDEX's backyard.

I agree with sentiment above. I've never used any of Amazon's video services. Netflix and Xfinity streaming is more than enough for me. They should shift the cost to all that nonsense. Maybe create a shipping-only prime service.

I wish they would do a monthly membership plan instead of 80 bucks or now 100 or whatever they change it to all in one shot. At the least make the video membership a monthly service to compete a bit more with Netflix.

I'd be shocked if they offered a monthly prime shipping option for anything near a pro-rated fraction of the current price. Their shipping volume spikes massively between Black Friday and Christmas; and given the option to only pay for a single month for gift buying they'd probably see a large fraction of their customer base drop paying for the other 11 months of the year while still getting half or more of their products shipped via prime.

I'm a fan of the bundled approach. It is the sum of Prime that makes me shell out cash for it, not any individual piece. I'll also pay extra for it. And the reason for that is that Amazon customer service speaks english and is fast to reach.

But insisting on bundling is going to keep away customers who don't want both, especially as the price goes up. A smarter way to do the price increase, it seems to me, would be to do something like this (numbers are picked mostly off of educated guessing, the only real number I'm using is the $7 or $8 Netflix charges for a streaming-only plan):

On the assumption that the shipping represents the bulk of the cost of Prime, slice that off on its own at, say, $95--a lot of people not using the streaming are already effectively paying $80 to only get the shipping benefit, so this shouldn't be a big enough price hike in a single go to scare them off. Then sell the streaming separately, for something like $10 a month (I'm not sure how much you can go above Netflix and stay competitive, hence calling it $10).

Then, if people sign up for both, given them a token discount on taking the bundle. Maybe an even $100 for everything. (You could apply a similar strategy to a pricing plan that makes the bundle come out to $120 overall, but I think you'd have to go more like $110 for the bundle and even then I think it's too much of an all-at-once increase to keep people happy.)

This seems like the best way to get the revenue increase they're after without scaring too many people away.

I've had Amazon Prime for a decade now (jeez I feel old). I am shocked it remains $80/yr. If they pushed a 25% price hike I would remain okay with it. The service is superb and I use Amazon enough that it more than pays for itself every year.

I've been a prime member for several years; and as Amazon's both grown larger and slowly given ground on sales taxes they've been able to put warehouses a lot closer to where most people live instead of hiding out in the handful of states that don't have sales tax. Over the last year or so I've gotten about 1/3rd of my orders delivered next day instead of 2 days; and I'd guess that probably 2/3rds to 3/4ths of my orders probably were from places close enough to be ground shipped instead of sent air freight. With shipping prices everywhere else ballooning I'd figured for years that it was only shrinking transit distances that allowed them to hold the price on prime where it is; I guess they've finally ran out of room for farther cost savings from that to hold the line.